educating the stoic warrior - hoover institutioneducating the stoic warrior nancy sherman...

Educatingthe

StoicWarrior

Nancy Sherman

in a remarkably prescient moment, James B. Stockdale, then a seniorNavy pilot shot down over Vietnam, muttered to himself as he para-chuted into enemy hands, “Five years down there, at least. I’m leavingbehind the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”1

Epictetus’s famous handbook, the Enchiridion, was Stockdale’s bedtimereading in the many carrier wardrooms he occupied as he cruised inthe waters off Vietnam in the mid-sixties. Stoic philosophy resonatedwith Stockdale’s temperament and profession, and he committed manyof Epictetus’s pithy remarks to memory. Little did he know on thatshoot-down day of Septemer 9, 1965, that Stoic tonics would hold thekey to his survival for six years of POW life. They would also form the

1. From James B. Stockdale, Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines ina Lab of Human Behavior (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1994).

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backbone of his leadership style as the senior officer in the POW chainof command.

It doesn’t take too great a stretch of the imagination to think of aPOW survivor as a kind of Stoic sage, for the challenge the POW liveswith is the Stoic’s challenge: to find dignity when stripped of nearly allnourishment of the body and soul. Stoicism is a philosophy of defense,a philosophy of “sucking it up.” On a strict reading, it minimizes vul-nerability by denying the intrinsic goodness of things that lie outsideone’s control. In many ways, boot camp is a green soldier’s early lessonin Stoicism. In general, it is easy to think of military men and womenas Stoics. The very term has come to mean, in our vernacular, con-trolled, disciplined, not easily agitated or disturbed. Military officerstend to cultivate these character traits. In a vivid way, they live out theconsolations of Stoic practical philosophy. In this paper I explore certainaspects of military moral education by returning to ancient Stoic teach-ings.

My own tour of duty with the military began on a drizzly Februaryday in 1994. A Navy chaplain had invited me to brainstorm with thetop brass about moral remediation for some 133 midshipmen impli-cated in an “EE” or “double E” (electrical engineering) cheating scan-dal. The chaplain knew I was no Navy insider, but he wanted my inputas an academic ethicist. That February meeting in 1994 led initially toa consultancy and visiting ethics lectureship whose audience was theimplicated EE students. Then, in 1997, I was appointed the inauguralDistinguished Chair in Ethics at the Naval Academy. I was broughtaboard, in naval lingo, to teach what American and European univer-sities had been teaching for the better part of this century—essentially,Ethics 101. But at an engineering school like the Naval Academy,introductory ethics had passed them by. Leadership courses were astandard mix of management and motivational psychology. Yet the farmore ancient subject of ethics was somehow viewed as a newfangled,possibly heretical course that would dare to teach what ought to be bredin the bones. I was to teach ethics, ethics for the military. That was


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contractual. What wasn’t prearranged was what the military would teachme. They would allow me entrance into a world that for many of mygeneration had been cut off by Vietnam and had remained largelyimpregnable ever since. And they would offer something of a livingexample of the doctrines of Stoicism I had studied before only as texts.

The allure of Stoicism became explicit each term at a certain pointin the semester. The course I taught covered topical themes of honesty,liberty, virtue, and just war interwoven with the writings of historicalfigures such as Aristotle and Aquinas, John Stuart Mill and ImmanuelKant, and Epictetus as a representative Stoic. It was when we arrived atEpictetus that many felt they had come home. What resonated withthem was what resonated with Jim Stockdale as he read Epictetus eachnight.

There are things which are within our power, and there are thingswhich are beyond our power. Within our power are opinion, aim,desire, aversion, and in one word, whatever affairs are our own. Beyondour power are body, property, reputation, office, and in one word,whatever are not properly our own affairs.

. . . Remember, then, that if you attribute freedom to things bynature dependent and take what belongs to others for your own, youwill be hindered, you will lament, you will be disturbed, you will findfault both with gods and men . . . If it concerns anything beyond ourpower, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.2

Epictetus rightly thinks that our opinions, desires, and emotions arein our power, not in the radical sense that we can produce them,instantly, at will, but in the sense that we can do things, indirectly, toshape them. He is right to think, with the Stoics in general, that ouropinions about self and others influence our desires and emotions. Incontrast to these things over which we have some control, we have farless control over other sorts of goods. A marine may be killed in friendlyfire that he had no way of avoiding, a sailor may be deserving of deco-

2. Enchiridion, Hackett, trans. (Indianapolis: N. White, 1983): 11.


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ration and promotion, though overlooked because of gender prejudicethat she alone can’t change, stocks may take a nosedive however prudentone’s investments. A Stoic, like Epictetus, reminds us of the line thatdivides what is and what is not within our control and that we will bemiserable if our happiness itself depends too heavily upon things overwhich we have little dominion. The Stoic recommendation is not com-placency or a retreat to a narrow circle of safety. We are to continue tomeet challenges and take risks, to stretch the limits of our mastery. Weare to continue to strive with our best efforts to achieve our ends, butwe must learn greater strength in the face of what we simply cannotchange.

A Brave New Stoicism

Who are the Stoics from whom the military take implicit guidance?Epictetus has been mentioned, but we need to put his writings inhistorical context. Roughly speaking, the ancient Stoics span the periodfrom 300 b.c. to a.d. 200. They are part of the broad Hellenistic move-ment of philosophy that follows upon Aristotle and includes, in additionto Stoicism, ancient Skepticism and Epicureanism. The early GreekStoics, known as the old Stoa (taking their name from the stoa or paintedcolonnade near the central piazza of Athens where disciples paced backand forth) were interested in systematic philosophical thought thatjoined ethics with studies in physics and logic. The works of the foundersof the school—Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus—survive only in frag-ments, quoted by later writers. Indeed, much of what we know aboutStoicism comes through Roman redactors such as Cicero, Seneca,Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. These Roman redactors, some writingin Greek—Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius—others writing in Latin—Seneca and Cicero—viewed themselves as public philosophers at thecenter of public life.

Cicero (106–43 b.c.), well-known Roman political orator, consul,and ally to Pompey, turned to specifically philosophical writing at theend of his political career after Caesar’s assassination (which Cicero


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viewed as a tyrannicide) and while in hiding from his own futureassassins, Antony and the other triumvirs. Though himself not a Stoic(rather he identified as a member of the New Academy or school ofSkepticism), he wrote extensively on Stoic views and his work, especiallyOn Ends and On Duties, remained highly influential throughout theRenaissance and Enlightenment as statements of Stoic positions. Sen-eca, writing in the mid-first century a.d., was the tutor and politicaladviser of the young emperor, Nero. He wrote voluminously on, amongother things, the passions and how anger, hatred, and envy, if notunderstood and properly reined in, can ruin a ruler and bring down acommonwealth, as well as about attachment and fortune, and how wecan learn to become less vulnerable to their vicissitudes. Epictetus, aGreek slave-turned-philosopher who also wrote in the time of Nero’sreign, greatly influenced Marcus Aurelius. Epictetus’s aphoristic writ-ings, summarized in a popular handbook, teach about the power of ourminds and imagination to find a measure of mastery and fulfillmenteven in enslavement.

Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and warrior, wrote his famousMeditations in a.d. 172 in the fleeting moments of quiet he was able tosnatch during German campaigns. In contrast to Seneca’s writings,which are often addressed to others, Marcus’s meditations are exhorta-tions to himself, about his status as a citizen of the world and thecommunity of humanity and god linked through reason and law withnature. He warns how one can be lured away from reason by theattractions of place or wealth or pleasurable indulgence, and how a zealfor glory can pervert happiness. A repeated theme is that we live in aHeraclitean world of flux. To find happiness, we cannot hold on tootightly to what is transient and beyond our control.

The Stoics teach self-sufficiency and the importance of detachingfrom dependence on worldly goods that make us vulnerable. In a similarfashion, they advocate detachment from sticky emotions that mark ourinvestment in things beyond our control. In a manner of speaking, thesoldier preparing for battle heeds that advice. A Navy flier with whomI taught at the academy once told me that before he went on a mission,



he took control of his emotions by uttering the mantra “compartmen-talize, compartmentalize, compartmentalize.” The trick, of course, isto know when to compartmentalize and when not to. Mission-prepar-edness seems to require it. But full Stoic detachment from emotionsthat record connection as well as loss can be too high a price to pay,even for the warrior. In particular, the capacity to grieve, to mourn one’sdead, is crucial for warrior survival. Consider Coriolanus, the legendaryfifth-century b.c. warrior who turns against his native city for banishinghim. He is portrayed by Shakespeare as the paragon Stoic warrior.Physically strong and detached, more at home in the battlefield thanwith his wife and son, he is the military man par excellence. Fearless,he sheds few tears. And yet the play’s turning point comes when Corio-lanus remembers how to weep. “It is no little thing,” he concedes, “tomake mine eyes to sweat compassion.” It is Coriolanus’s mother, Vo-lumnia, who reawakens his soul. Her entreaties persuade him to quithis siege of Rome and to restore peace. In weeping, Coriolanus findshuman dignity.

Coriolanus may be a loner, a mama’s boy at heart, touched only bya mother’s tears. But for most soldiers, combat itself nurtures a cama-raderie akin to the family relationships of childhood. The friendship ofAchilles and Patroclus, central to the Iliad, symbolizes brothers-in-armsfor all time. We can’t begin to understand Achilles’ near suicidal mourn-ing for Patroclus without appreciating the sheer intensity of that bond.Moreover, we’re misled if we think, as many readers have, that a friend-ship so passionate must be sexual, that only warrior-lovers could grieveas Achilles does for Patroclus.3 Whether sexual partners or not, Achilles’grief for Patroclus could not be greater. The Iliad, like much of Greekculture, celebrates philia, the bond of friendship, with all its passionand shared journeys and recognizes the dignity of grief that comes whendeath or separation breaks the bond.

3. For a good discussion of this, see Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam (NewYork: Simon & Schuster, 1994).


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In contemporary war, too, where soldiers put themselves at risk todefend each other, where Marines risk the living to save the dead orthose with little breath left, the camaraderie of brothers- and sisters-in-arms tempers the sacrifices. Contemporary combat soldiers don’t alwayshave time to grieve. In missions where combat rarely stops, where pilotscatapult from carriers only seconds after learning that the sorties beforethem will never return, where veterans come home in ones and twosaboard commercial airlines (as they did from Vietnam) and not enmasse with their cohorts (as my father did from World War II aboardthe converted Queen Mary), there is little time or place to sweat tearsof compassion, yet deferring grief has devastating psychological costs.

The issues are raised penetratingly by Jonathan Shay in Achilles inVietnam. As a Vietnam veterans’ psychiatrist, he urges that communalgrief work must again take place, as it did in the ancient world of theIliad, if we are to help soldiers avoid the living death of postcombattrauma. Many of his patients say, “I died in Vietnam.” Like Achilles atthe death of Patroclus, they view themselves as already dead, dead anddeadened by losing a close friend, “another self,” as Aristotle would say.

Of course, the orthodox Stoic might say loss is not real loss if it fallsoutside what we can control through our own effort and virtue. We’ddo better to change our habits of attachment than to pamper thosewhose false attachments create their losses. But we can learn fromStoicism without embracing its strict letter. What we can learn is thatin the midst of our grieving, we still have a home in the world, connectedto others whose fellowship and empathy support us, that we have innerresources that allow us to stand again after we have fallen. This humanside of Stoicism can toughen us without robbing us of our humanity. Iam reminded here of a stony-faced Marine colonel, who confided inme one evening that his most wrenching experience in war came noton the battlefield but in leaving behind his firstborn, a one-and-a-half-year-old boy. Going down to the plane, to begin his unaccompaniedmission, his guts seized up on him. “I literally became sick to mystomach and vomited the whole way. I was violently ill the whole flight.”



Another colleague told me that flying planes was easy. He said hewas even amazed that he was paid to do what he loved. What was agonywas leaving his wife and child behind. Nothing made that easier. Noth-ing could. These are tough warriors, Stoic warriors, but they are madeof human stuff. They sweat tears of compassion. They heave their gutsout when they leave their loved ones.

Other traditions, before and after Stoicism, present a philosophywith softer, human lines from the start. So Aristotle emphasizes through-out his ethical and political writings that the attachments of friendshipare an irreducible part of a good life, and to lose a beloved friend is tolose part of what counts for happiness. One’s own goodness cannotmake up the difference, but necessarily relies on the goodness of othersfor completion. Similarly, Judeo-Christian traditions emphasize thehealing power of love and compassion. In Exodus 15.26, God is por-trayed as fearful and awesome, but also for the first time in the biblicalnarrative as a healer, ready to protect the Israelites against disease andprovide them with water and bread in their forty-days-and-forty-nightstrek through the wilderness.

The Stoics may struggle to capture the full palette of emotionalattachment, but they profoundly recognize our cosmopolitan status inthe world and stress, in a way significant for military education, therespect and empathy required of citizens of the world. Seneca in OnAnger reminds his interlocutor, Novatus, that he is a citizen, not just ofhis country, but of that greater city of his, that universal commonwealthof the cosmos.4 Each of us is a world citizen, the Stoics emphasize,following Diogenes the Cynic’s notion of the human as a kosmopolites,literally, “cosmic, universal citizen.”5 We are each parts of an extended

4. Seneca, “On Anger,” II.31, in Seneca: Moral and Political Essays, John M.Cooper and J. F. Procop, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

5. As noted in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, R. D. Hicks,trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972): 6.63. See also Epictetus,Discourses, W. A. Oldfather, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925):2.10.3, I.9.2.


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commonwealth and risk our individual integrity when we sever our-selves from the fellowship of that community. Marcus Aurelius makesthe point graphically in terms of a much-used Stoic metaphor of theorganic body:

If you have ever seen a dismembered hand or foot or head cut off,lying somewhere apart from the rest of the trunk, you have an imageof what a man makes of himself . . . when he . . . cuts himself off anddoes some unneighborly act . . . For you came into the world as a partand you have cut yourself off.6

Thus, on the Stoic view, it is as if we mutilate ourselves when wecut ourselves off from the global community. The notion of extendedworld citizenship became relevant to my Navy students as they preparedto risk their lives in foreign corners of the world and serve in multina-tional coalitions. Many students actively wrestled with what they saw ascompeting views of allegiance—to one’s country and its leaders and toone’s allies and their leaders. I recall one student who questionedwhether he was really obligated to take orders from foreign commanderswho might head integrated units to which he found himself assigned.His ultimate loyalty, he insisted, was to the Constitution of the UnitedStates, and after that, through a chain of command from the com-mander-in-chief to American commanders. In swearing to uphold theAmerican Constitution he had not explicitly sworn to serve NATO orother international coalitions or agreements. This student wasn’t alonein his skepticism. Many midshipmen, on their initiation day as plebes,have only the faintest idea that in swearing to uphold the Constitutionthey are pledging to a broader kind of world citizenship. The mostcompelling rebuttal to their skepticism often came from officers at theAcademy who had themselves served in foreign coalitions as part oftheir military duty in the Persian Gulf and Bosnia. Many were engagedin training other nationals for more cohesive membership in coalitions.

6. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, A. S. L. Farquharson, trans. (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989): 8.34.



Most understood implicitly that patriotism to country is not underminedby broader community allegiances. One can be fervently loyal to coun-try and still serve under or command foreign officers who are part ofbroader international coalitions. Marcus Aurelius commanding troopsand writing his memoirs today would most likely guard against a patri-otism that demands narrow nationalism. For a nation and its militaryto sever itself from the larger alliance of nations would be an act of self-mutilation, a dismemberment of hand or foot from the whole body.

The Stoic Hierocles, writing in the first century a.d., adverts to thenotion of cosmopolitanism as follows: “Each one of us [is] entirelyencompassed by many circles, some smaller, others larger . . . The firstcircle contains parents, siblings, wife, and children.” As we move out-ward, we move through grandparents, to neighbors, to fellow tribesmenand citizens, and ultimately to the whole human race. He insists that itis incumbent upon each of us “to draw the circles together somehowtowards the center,” to respect people from the outer circles as thoughthey were from the inner. We are to do this “by zealously transferringthose from the enclosing circles to the enclosed ones,” to bring what isfar to what is near, “to reduce the distance of the relationship with eachperson.”7

Hierocles himself neither tells us exactly how we are to psycholog-ically assimilate those in outer circles with inner ones so that we cancome to identify with their circumstances, nor does he explore thenature of our duties, military or otherwise, in terms of which we showrespect for others as we move outward in those circles. Later philoso-phers, themselves influenced by the Stoics, fill in the psychologicalstory. We can do no better than turn to Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment writer. Sympathy, Smith argues, is acognitive transport, a cognitive moment of becoming another. In hisapt words, it involves “trading places in fancy,” requiring an active

7. See A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1 (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987): 349.


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transference of the mind onto another, a simulation or role-play of whatit is like to be another in his or her circumstances. “To beat time” toanother’s breast, he says, requires a projective capacity by which weimagine another’s case:

As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we canform no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by con-ceiving of what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Thoughour brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our easeour senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did,and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by theimagination only that we can form any conception of what are hissensations. . . . It is the impressions of our own senses only, not thoseof his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination we placeourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the sametorments, we enter, as it were, into his body and become in somemeasure the same person with him; and thence form some idea of hissensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree,is not altogether unlike them.8

The description brilliantly presages what contemporary philoso-phers of mind and cognitive psychologists now refer to as a “simulation”process by which we come to identify with others and, in some sense,“read” their minds. But again, we do well if we not only go forward intime, but backward. Smith was an avid reader of Cicero (as were mostphilosophers of the enlightenment period), and the notion of “placingourselves in another’s situation” becomes far clearer if we bring to bearCicero’s notion, in On Duties, of the different personae we wear.9 Toread another’s mind one must “recenter” oneself on another, by imag-ining, as Cicero would put it, the shared personae we all have as rational

8. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,1976 [1759]): 47–48.

9. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins, eds. On Duties (Cambridge, Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1991): I.96ff. For a very helpful commentary, see Christopher Gill, “Per-sonhood and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero, De Officiis I” in OxfordStudies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. VI (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).



human beings, but also the personae we wear that are different fromperson to person. To empathize with or simply understand others, wemust imagine what it is like to be another with distinctive temperamentsand talents, in another’s situation and circumstances, living life withlife choices. It is not just that we “change” circumstances; we alsochange who we are in those circumstances. Thus, we don’t simply putourselves in others’ shoes. We imagine ourselves as others in their ownshoes. Sometimes we do this almost unconsciously. But at other times,as Hierocles says, we must keep zealously working at the transference.

We don’t tend to think of the contemporary warrior as a “cosmopol-itan” of this sort, but this is a central part of ancient Stoic teaching, andone that current-day warriors need to embrace as they increasingly facethe demands of international coalitions and long-term peacekeepingmissions in foreign countries. It is a notion we all need to take to heartas the demands of global citizenship become more and more a reality.

Sound Bodies and Sound Minds

Stoicism within the military revives another ancient Greek educationaltheme—the belief that strong bodies and minds must be cultivatedtogether. Even in leg irons, with a broken leg and in solitary prison, JimStockdale forced himself to do more than a hundred sit-ups each morn-ing. Controlling his own body, in the face of relentless torture anddeprivation, was his way of staying alive and sane. He lived and breathedthe Stoic doctrine that effort, endurance, and inner virtue are majorcomponents of human goodness. Self-endurance began with gainingcontrol back of his own body, even in shackles.

For a public obsessed with consumption and consumer products,hungry for epicurean novelties but tired of pleats of adipose, thestripped-down life of military endurance and discipline offers an attrac-tive tonic. Whether at eighteen or fifty, the military officer makes phys-ical discipline part of the daily regimen. It shows up in the unmistakable,steel-gripped handshake, in workout regimens that begin or end each


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day, in physical training tests and weigh-ins that are part of a militaryrecord. All of my students participated in sports at the end of each classday, and most had additional workout regimens. The retired officers Iworked with closely kept up their training, sporting youthful bodies wellinto their late sixties. My office suite mate, retired Adm. “Bud” Edney,a former pilot and commander in chief (CINC) of the North Atlanticregion, became an avid spinner with his wife in his retirement years,and kept up with his biking and skiing as family activities. Adm. Larson,the four-star superintendent of the Naval Academy during my term, hada workout schedule in his home that began each day before 6 a.m.

Others, who were once submariners and consigned to a treadmill onboard, vowed now only to run outdoors, however inclement the weather.

For the military, strong bodies are mission-critical. The militarytrains warriors to have the strength to endure on the battlefield and thestamina to test human limits. Marine boot camp epitomizes the goal.The eleven-week moral and physical training culminates with what iscalled the crucible, two days of sleep and food deprivation, followed byan obstacle course in grueling environmental conditions. Survival isgroup survival. The goal is for the team to return as a team, even if itmeans coming home on the back of another.

As civilians, how should we view physical fitness when strong bodiesare not exactly mission-critical, when there aren’t jungles to passthrough, daily thirty-mile hikes to endure, ammunition, persons, andbodies to carry to safety? In most white-collar professions, fit bodies aresimply not part of the job description—legs of steel and arms of ironare neither here nor there. True, how we look in our clothes mightsubtly matter for job success, but there is nothing like the ubiquitous(if unwritten) military requirement to look good in a uniform.

This misses the obvious point. Civilian fitness is mission-critical inthe very sense that any sort of healthy living requires it. Current worriesabout the significant rise of child and adult obesity are not misplaced.We need weight that doesn’t overly tax vital organs, a strong heart topump enough oxygen, adequate release of endorphins, serotonin, and



other hormones to give us vitality and zest, bones that are dense enoughto bear our own weight, and so on.

Ancient Greek and Roman thought is again an important source ofguidance. For Plato and Aristotle, the great Greek philosophers whopreceded the Stoics, virtue is as much a disposition toward self as towardothers, and care of self includes how we care for our bodies. Temper-ance, for Aristotle, is a kind of internalized control in which we nolonger have excessive bodily appetites and can moderate ourselves with-out much internal conflict. In short, we master indulgence and itsimpulses—lose the temptation, as one might say, to do otherwise. Theprior developmental step is egkrateia, self-control or continence. Herewe master appetite, but not without active struggle and forbearance.When we lapse from either of these forms of control, we are akratic,literally lacking in control or weak-willed. Appetite gets the better ofjudgment when we know what is best, but act against our knowledge.We avert our eyes. At times, Aristotle (and before him, Socrates) suggeststhat weakness of will is a kind of ignorance.10 But we do best to think ofit as motivated ignorance. We are ignorant only in the sense that wedon’t want to be reminded of what we know to be best.

Plato’s dialogue, The Republic, has long influenced Western culturein its advocacy of an early education that includes gymnastics as well asmusic. But Plato insists that in the best education “the exercises andtoils of gymnastics” are not mere “means to muscle;”11 like music,bodybuilding is a way of shaping the psyche as well. It is a way of buildingmental discipline and spiritedness, a way of storing the general habitand procedures of control in mind as well as in muscle memory. Thelessons of athletics are wasted, Plato insists, if their point is only to makea body more chiseled or agile. I have heard similar remarks from collegeathletic coaches who encourage young people to go into sports, not

10. See his discussion in Nicomachean Ethics, VII.3, Davis Ross, trans. (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998): VII.3.

11. Plato’s Republic, G. Grube, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974): Book III.


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simply to become athletes, but to become individuals who have inter-nalized the rigors of discipline and self-control. As Cicero remarks,strength of soul resembles “the strength and sinews and effectiveness ofthe body.”12

In the contemporary world of the military, temperance and bodilyfitness are monitored by external judges who test and keep records, whohave the power to remove a sailor or marine if there is a lapse. Some ofthat surveillance can be harsh and, at times, insensitive to personal andgender differences. Women’s bodies, by nature more fat-rich thanmen’s, pose difficult challenges for the military in measuring body fat.Shortly after I left the Naval Academy, a woman who was an exemplarystudent and recipient of a prestigious prize for an ethics essay waseventually dismissed from the Academy on the grounds that her bodyfat exceeded the appropriate standard for her height. Even if the chartsare different for men and women, the danger in a male culture, espe-cially one that so prizes uniformity and cohesion, is that women will beshoehorned into male molds. For years, the military struggled with whatsort of physical fitness requirements to impose on women, given wo-men’s different centers of gravity and strength. Standards now in placereflect reasonable gender differences, but resentment still lingers amongsome men that women are getting off the hook too easily. The reply tothese complaints, as one of my colleagues at the Naval Academy oncesaid, is easy. Ask the guy who objects to the women’s standards if hewould like his acceptable weight range pegged to the women’s charts.Silence usually ensues.

In the civilian world, physical fitness and bodily health are more amatter of private virtue. Doctors have always taken records of weightand height and, in recent years, increasingly discuss smoking, diet,exercise, and alcohol consumption with patients. Their influence istypically at the level of recommendation rather than requirement. By

12. J. E. King, trans., Tusculan Disputations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1927): IV.13.30.



and large, the disciplined care of one’s body sits squarely on one’s ownshoulders. Like most provinces of morality that fall outside legal pur-view, it is one’s own business. This is as it should be. And yet with oneout of two Americans overweight, the virtue of temperance seems tohave become a personal virtue that is viewed as optional. “Self-indul-gence is a human condition,” Seneca writes, “even if in some pleasureswild animals are more intemperate than humans.”13 As with most vir-tues, temperance corrects a standing human condition, in this case, thetendency toward excessive appetite on the one hand, or bodily neglecton the other. We might add, temperance also corrects overcontrol.

If the Stoics are to offer inspiration, then the lesson to celebrate isnot human control in excess, but in moderation. The Stoics constantlyremind us how and in what way we have more dominion than we mightat first think, whether it be in the physical sphere, moral, or emotionalarena. But no plausible Stoicism can urge that we have unlimiteddominion, even over our own virtue.

Good Manners, Good Morals

Strong characters and bodies are part of the military appeal, but so aremanners. For those who believe manners build morals, the militaryoffers the lesson in spades. At the mealtime formation at the Academy,visitors line up daily to see a brigade of crisply pressed uniforms andtaut, straight bodies. Officers and midshipmen generally greet civilianswith a “sir” or “ma’am,” locked eye gaze, and firm handshake. They arehelpful and courteous, polite and civil. The question that came to nagme as an ethicist was “how deep does surface conduct go?” Do mannerslead to morals, etiquette to ethics? Should the civilian world, baffled bythe degeneration of civility in public life, take better notice of the roleof decorum in military culture? Is good conduct a part of good char-

13. J. M. Cooper and J. F. Procop, eds., “On Anger” in Seneca: Moral and PoliticalEssays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995): I.3.


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acter? It is easy to be skeptical here. Codes of conduct are highly local.What one group finds a pleasing sign of respect, another may find overlyformal or off-putting. Given the variability of conduct codes acrosscultures, how can behavior that is so culture-specific get to the heart ofwhat matters morally? Moreover, much military conduct is mindlessdrill and compliance motivated by fear of those higher up in the chainof command. Can motivation so pegged to punishment still help anindividual achieve inner virtue?

These legitimate concerns are not easily dismissed. They are criti-cisms most civilians would bring to a military environment, myselfincluded. Yet I have become persuaded that the military is right inthinking that manners matter. Like moral acts such as helping or res-cuing, showing courage or generosity, moral manners are also ways weroutinely express our concern or respect for others. To look another inthe eye but not stare them down, to listen without interrupting, to bemindful of what would offend, insult, or shame are in many culturessimply ways to acknowledge others as worthy of respect. True, certainmanners may have more local coinage than others, but the fact thatcodes of etiquette vary culturally and that some codes are morallyproblematic does not generally impugn the connection of a good codeof etiquette with morality.14

Stoic teachings are again instructive here. Seneca writes a lengthy,seven-book treatise on the subject of how to give and receive favors. Itis a subject we might think, at first blush, befitting only the interests ofMiss Manners and her readership. But as we read “On Favours,” Senecashows us how the matter is central to morality and crucial for humanfellowship. Even a Stoic, bent on hardscrabble integrity and self-reli-ance, has an obligation to give and take gifts with grace: “When we havedecided to accept [a gift], we should do so cheerfully. We should expressour delight and make it obvious to our benefactor. We must show our

14. For a lively discussion, see Sarah Buss, “Appearing Respectful: The MoralSignificance of Etiquette,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs (1999).



gratitude by pouring out our feelings and bearing witness to them, notonly in his presence but everywhere.”15 These attitudes are part of howwe care for others and show our gratitude when cared for. Similarly, inOn Duties, Cicero limns in considerable detail how “our standing, ourwalking, our sitting and our reclining, our countenances, our eyes andthe movements of our hands” all are the outward expressions of ourcharacter.16 Moreover, the Stoics hold that moral virtue requires a pro-gression that moves from doing actions because they are appropriateand externally in accord with rules of right action, to doing actions thatare right because they are motivated by virtue itself. What is mere goodconduct in one person can in another be a morally worthy actionbecause of its motivation.

Even if we grant the contribution of good manners to good morals,we might still doubt whether the military is the right model to watch.Consider Robert Duvall, playing the role of career officer in the movieThe Great Santini. He painfully discovers that he can be the militarycolonel at home to his wife and children only at risk of losing them. Hetakes the gamble, for he knows no other way of winning respect. (Sim-ilarly, one midshipman told me after returning from Thanksgivingbreakthat he was confused at home as to how to address his parents. Shouldhe call them, “Sir” or “Ma’am” as he does his commanding officers, orjust “Mom” and Dad” as he always has? The appropriate forms of respecthad become fuzzy in his mind.)

Santini’s notion of respect is based on hierarchy and rank as cap-tured by the idea that a military person salutes the uniform, not theperson, and the uniform higher up in the chain of command. (Thesight is a common one at the Naval Academy as students with almostmechanically hinged forearms salute officers whom they pass in the

15. J. M. Cooper and J. F. Procop, eds. “On Favours” in Seneca: Moral and PoliticalEssays (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995): II.22.

16. M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins, eds. “On Duties” using Cicero: On Duties(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991): I.128.


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yard.) Outside the military, respect is a more democratic notion. Parentsand elders may deserve special honor, but all, simply as persons, areworthy of basic respect. Moreover, respect in the civilian world is oftenconveyed in caring about the feelings of others, that one not shame,humiliate, or slight insofar as such attitudes offend a person’s dignity.This is certainly an underlying theme in Seneca’s treatise, “On Fa-vours,” but it is the rare commander who is terribly worried about thenuances of hurt feelings or squashed egos. Most officers would contendthat a goodly amount of ego deflation is requisite for strong unit cohesionand achievement of the mission. Finally, there’s the nagging issue ofappearance, so critical to the military. Appearing respectful matters. Yet,why put so much emphasis on the pretense and artifice of behavior?Why reward the person who may be only a hypocrite or dissembler?Moreover, how does a straight back or hair pinned impeccably in placeactually reflect on the goodness of a soul? In the ladies’ room at theAcademy, I saw women fix each strand of hair in place with bobby pinsand spray so that not a wisp fell below regulation shoulder length. Theyclearly cared about the well-groomed look of an officer.

What underlies such care for decorum other than the desire toplease? Both Cicero and Seneca argue that much decorum is under-pinned by a desire to please and to take others’ opinions into account.17

They don’t explicitly defend the stance, but imply that some degree ofconcern for how one is viewed is intimately connected with respect forothers. Desiring to be agreeable, not to offend or disdain, not to slight,is part of what is involved in taking another seriously. We oughtn’t makeourselves servile in the task or violate our own views of what is morallyright in order not to offend. In cases where there is no conflict, concernfor another at the level of emotional and formal comportment seems apart of moral respect for them. For this reason manners matter.

Even Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth-century German Enlight-enment philosopher, notorious for his austere Stoic-inspired philosophy

17. See for example, Seneca, “On Favours,” II.1–2, II.13; “On Duties,” I.93–124.



of duty, urges that duty is not just inner virtue but a matter of mannerand affect as well:

No matter how insignificant these laws of refined humanity may seem,especially in comparison with pure moral laws, anything that pro-motes sociability, even if it consists only in pleasing maxims or man-ners, is a garment that dresses virtue to advantage, a garment to berecommended to virtue in more serious respects too.18

Controlling Anger and Rage

It is often said that anger is the underbelly of courage, that it mobilizesus to fight, that we need to keep the flame of anger kindled to be warriors.Cicero rehearses the view: “no stern commands” can rally ourselves orothers, whether on the battlefield or off, “without something of the keenedge of irascibility.” Irascibility is “the whetstone of bravery.”19 BothCicero and Seneca deny the claim. Indeed, the Stoics argue strenuouslythat anger and rage are pernicious emotions that do more damage thangood. “No plague has cost the human race more,” Seneca says in hisfamous treatise, “On Anger.” A true Stoic warrior doesn’t rely on angerto fight his battles.

Part of the problem with anger, according to the Stoics, is that itcan’t easily be moderated—once turned on, it can’t easily be turned off.It is a runaway passion, the Stoics say, whose stride outpaces the com-mand of reason. It is “the most rabid and unbridled of all emotions,”20

says Seneca. It perverts the body and mind, and literally disfigures theface. Seneca is graphic in his portrait. Those who are angry have

eyes ablaze and glittering, a deep flush over all the face as blood boilsup from the vitals, quivering lips, teeth pressed together, bristling hair

18. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Mary J. Gregor, trans. (The Hague:Nijoff, 1974): 282.

19. See Tusculan Disputations IV.19.21.20. See “On Anger,” III.16.


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standing on end, breath drawn in and hissing, the crackle of writhinglimbs, groans and bellowing . . . . the hideous horrifying face of swollenself-degradation—you would hardly know whether to call the vicehateful or ugly.21

Seneca insists that we can control this hideous frenzy and rid ourselvesof its corrosive effects by a bold straightforward method: let go of thekinds of attachments to honor or reputation, or victory or wealth, whichwhen threatened make us angry. These are not real goods, he teaches,following ancient Stoic doctrine. True, the Stoics concede, they are thekinds of goods that we might like to have and that we prefer rather thannot prefer, but having them adds nothing substantive to our happiness.They are not genuine parts of happiness which in the Stoic view (whichclosely follows Socrates’ teachings) is only a function of inner virtue. Itsprosperity is the prosperity of virtue, not of wealth, fortune, or theopinions of others.

The full Stoic view may be hard to swallow. We do depend onothers’ opinions of us, and think our reputation in a community matters.We would be different creatures, far less social and communal, far lessable to achieve the very Stoic goals of community and fellowship, if wewere indifferent to others’ praise and blame, compliments or slights.We couldn’t raise children without praise and blame from parents. Yet,in holding that certain emotions, like anger, involve mistaken values,the Stoics presuppose something more fundamental and more reveal-ing, namely, that emotions are themselves evaluations or appraisals,ways of judging the world. Aristotle holds that emotions involveconstruals about the world, though on his position those construals areneither systematically false nor misleading.22 They are part and parcelof knowing the world accurately and wisely—a view that has beenreappropriated by contemporary cognitive psychologists. In that view,emotions involve cognitive assessments of the environment that lead to

21. Ibid., 1.2.22. See, for example, the account of emotions in Rhetoric II.



arousal and desiderative responses. So sadness involves an appraisal thatI have been hurt, love the idea that he is attractive, or pity the thoughtthat someone has suffered unjustly. The Stoics go whole hog, though,in holding that emotions are nothing but beliefs, and consequently,that we can change emotions in their entirety by changing beliefs. Thereis no remainder. We might say they are the first to advocate a thorough-going cognitive therapy as a method of emotional change. Under theiraegis, the particular form that cognitive therapy takes is philosophicaldialectic. “Row the oars of dialectic,” Cicero says, if you are to transformthe soul.23

Few of us hold with the Stoics that emotions are nothing but beliefsor as corrigible as them. Nor are we likely to endorse the Stoic doctrinethat the kind of beliefs emotions involve predominantly embody falsevalues. Rather, most of us probably think, with Aristotle and currentcognitive psychologists, that emotions often give us truthful views of theworld, even if sometimes exaggerated or magnified. We also tend tothink that the desires that lace emotions and the physiological arousalsexpressive of emotions make for states that are as much body as mindand hence hard to relinquish by a sheer act of will. Few of us are readyto embrace wholeheartedly the Stoic doctrine that all goods other thanthe pure goodness of our souls ought to be matters of complete indif-ference to us, things from which we can fully detach in a search for ameaningful life. Yet despite the harshness of some of their views, theStoics propound a view that we are likely to have considerable sympathywith, and this is that to some degree, emotions embody ways of thinkingabout the world and evaluating it. Emotions judge the world, and whenwe subtly shift those ways of thinking (i.e., stop thinking that somethingis an offense, loss, injury, or attraction), we shift our emotional states.What most of us probably dispute is that the cognitive shift is itselfsufficient for an emotional shift, that feeling can be reduced to believing.

23. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, J. E. King, trans. (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1945).


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We now need to return to the original specific Stoic claim thatanger is an emotion needing extirpation. Can a Stoic, who roots out allanger, be trained to kill? Does this feature of a Stoic education makesense for a military person? I would suggest the harder conceptualproblem is not in considering the possibility that a warrior lacks anger,but that a virtuous person is devoid of all anger. To be a soldier, de-fending principle, abiding by rules of engagement, cognizant of theconstraints of just war and just conduct in war embodied in such doc-uments as the Law of Land warfare or the Geneva Conventions, in fact,requires a principled response to the demands of warfare. To act out offrenzy or rage, to systematically dehumanize the enemy in the way thatanger toward an enemy often requires, for a commander to incite histroops by bloody thirst for revenge, for a pilot to be battle-happy in away that makes him nonchalant about the no-fly zone, is to risk runningafoul of the moral framework of war. No one can fight without theadrenaline rush of aggression and competitive spirit, and it is a drillsergeant’s job to push his troops to know those emotions well. But thatphysiological arousal may not itself be underpinned by the kinds ofjudgments that Seneca claims underlie irascibility and rage.

Even if we can conceive of a warrior who fights best because ofprinciple rather than anger, can we conceive of a virtuous person wholeaves behind his senses of anger, moral indignation, and outrage?Consider retired Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, the mansome have called the hero of My Lai.24 On March 16, 1968, he wasflying his observation helicopter when he spotted several woundedpeople on the ground and a dike where a group of GIs approached aninjured, unarmed woman of about twenty. Later one officer proddedthe woman with his foot, then killed her. Minutes later Thompson sawdozens of bodies in an irrigation ditch, their writhing movements sug-gesting that some were still alive. American infantrymen beside the

24. For my account, I have drawn on the report by Michael Hilton and Kevin Simin their Four Hours in My Lai (New York: Penguin, 1992).



ditch were taking a cigarette break from battle, taking off their steelhelmets for a moment of respite. Several minutes later, he saw one ofthe sergeants shooting at people in the ditch and his worst fears wereconfirmed. With his side gunner, Larry Colburn, and his crew chief,Glenn Andreotta, Thompson landed the helicopter, telling Colburn to“open up “ on the GI’s—“open up on ’em, blow ’em away”—if theyopened fire at him as he intervened.

After some thirty years of silence, the Army belatedly decoratedHugh Thompson with the prestigious Soldier’s Medal for his valor onthat day in My Lai. Shortly after, he visited Annapolis for a publicaddress, and we spent some time talking together. What were thosemoments of sighting the massacre at My Lai like, I asked. What did hefeel? In carefully chosen words, he remembered thinking that what hewitnessed was much like Nazi behavior during the Holocaust. At thetime, he thought American soldiers didn’t behave that way. They didn’tcommit genocide. He had shared similar thoughts with the midshipmenthat day, and the traces of anger and disbelief were still visible in hisface and audible in his voice as he recalled approaching the GIs wield-ing weapons against innocents. He himself didn’t use the words “moraloutrage,” but it was clear that his judgments about the horrors he sawthat day were the judgments that constitute moral anger. Thirty yearslater, upon returning to the village of My Lai for a memorial, he wasmet by one of the village women who survived the slayings. He remem-bered her then as a young mother. She was now a frail, aging woman.She yanked at Thompson’s sleeve and implored, “Why did the Ameri-can GI’s kill my family? Why? Why were they different from you?” Hebroke down in tears and said, “I don’t know. I don’t know. That is nothow I was taught to behave.”25

If we follow Seneca, do we support an education that would haveforced Thompson to look on with dispassionate disinterest, a kind of

25. I am remembering the gist of the conversation as it appeared on CBS’s 60Minutes.


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Stoic apathy, that could incite neither rage nor grief? Would we rootout the core of Thompson’s virtue and humanity? Seneca himself isinconsistent on the point. Anger is the clear enemy in his essay, yet hecloses his piece with the following exhortation, “While we still drawbreath, while we still remain among human beings, let us cultivate ourhumanity.”26 A Stoicism committed to the cultivation of humanity andhuman fellowship cannot, in fact, eliminate all human anger. As fren-zied and blinding as anger’s outbursts are, as dehumanizing as rage canbe, anger expressed in the right way at the right time is the sure sign ofhumanity. Aristotle, not the Stoics, got this point right: anger can bemorally fine and praiseworthy. If the Stoics improve upon Aristotle it isin reminding us that emotions are, more often than we think, a matterof our responsibility. The Stoics urge that the emotions are volitionalstates. We are not just affected when we suffer emotions, but as theStoics put it, we yield or give assent to certain judgments implicit inthose emotions.27 Even if we reluctantly embrace a notion of emotionsas voluntary, it is undeniable that over time we have considerable do-minion over how we respond emotionally. We take charge of how wecultivate our humanity, including, I would add, our anger.

Conclusion

The Stoics offer important lessons for the military, and, I would urge,for civilians as well. They give guidance in shaping a character educa-tion that takes seriously the values of discipline and self-mastery, whilerecognizing our dependence upon others not only in small communi-ties, but also globally. We have seen that Stoic lessons of self-sufficiencyand self-mastery are crucial antidotes to the indulgences of consumer-

26. “On Anger,” III.43. For an insightful discussion of “On Anger,” see MarthaNussbaum, The Therapy of Desire (Princeton University Press, 1994): Chapters 10 and11.

27. For a nuanced description of the voluntary and involuntary aspects of emotionalexperience, see Seneca’s “On Anger,” II.1–4.



ism and appetite that plague the contemporary scene. The point is notto idealize the life of deprivation or slavery (as a Stoic like Epictetusmay seem sometimes to do), but rather to cultivate the inner resourcesand virtues that allow for a measure of control in the face of strongtemptations and hard losses. The Stoic wisdom is that we have dominionin more areas of our lives than we acknowledge. Our physical strengthcan be built, our emotions affect us, but we also regulate them andlearn habits of mind and expression that convey our cares.

The Stoics make the latter point by suggesting that proper emotionsare forms of judgment that we openly accept and willfully allow. In thecase of an emotion like anger, they say we can control the judgmentswe consent to and endorse. We have seen how this stance has bothattractions and dangers. We know without being card-carrying Stoicsthat reflection allows us to revise overly hasty views about what mayannoy, insult, or offend, and that these revised judgments help us tochange how we feel, in some cases releasing us from the grip of unrea-sonable anger. The Stoics, however, insist that all anger is poisoned andthat the truly virtuous person is rid entirely of its venom, but we haveargued against this extreme view. Anger can also show its face as moraloutrage, indignation, and a sense of injustice. There are human mo-ments when anger is precisely the right response, however much wemay lose ourselves in the reaction. Similarly it is so for grief, compassion,and love. Perhaps the Stoic lesson is that there are ways of recoveringour mastery even after we have let go, forms of resilience and self-governance that allow for stability in the face of the strongest winds.

The Stoics also insist upon our cosmopolitan status as citizens ofthe universe, not isolated individuals or isolated nations. Military andcivic education must emphasize not only loyalty to country, but alsoloyalty to values beyond national borders. My midshipmen neededreminders of their broader citizenship in the urgent circumstance ofchain of command: from whom should they take orders? For many, thequestion of whom to respect, obey, and assist are more diffuse, but theyoung civilian, no less than the junior military officer, needs to know


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that moral obligations and wider circles of allegiance extend beyondnational borders. It is not just our economy that is global, but in apointed way, our moral community as well.

I have turned to the military as a case study for exploring Stoicismand have done so upon the military’s own lead. Many Navy officers Ihave worked with have implicitly and explicitly embraced Stoicism forguidance. I argue that we have much to reap from the rich Stoic texts.But I also urge a critical attitude in the face of more orthodox Stoictenets. The task as moral educators is to shape a Stoicism with a humanface. As Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s legendary Stoic warrior realized, “itis no little thing to make mine eyes to sweat compassion.”



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